


CA:TWS missing scenes

by domarzione, Domenika Marzione (domarzione)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-12
Updated: 2014-04-12
Packaged: 2018-04-06 19:37:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4234134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/domarzione/pseuds/domarzione, https://archiveofourown.org/users/domarzione/pseuds/Domenika%20Marzione
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>1) CA:TWS missing scene: Maria Hill & Nick Fury<br/>2) CA:TWS post-movie scene: Natasha in flight<br/>3) CA:TWS sorta-missing scene: Where in the world is Tony Stark?<br/>4) CA:TWS sorta post-movie scene: Tony (and Rhodey) and the possible ghost of James Barnes.<br/>5) CA:TWS sorta-missing scene: Where in the world is Clint Barton?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Contingencies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nick Fury and Maria Hill, pragmatists.

"What?" Fury prompted as Maria didn’t follow the others out of the room. "I leave something out?"

Maria smiled at him. Not friendly-like, since they weren’t friends. But ruefully, because they were colleagues and she had followed him into enough messes and cleaned up even more for him over the years. “You know you did, sir.”

They had just been given their orders for the most audacious — and most important — mission ever. But while the field operatives necessarily had to keep their focus on the mission itself and their parts in it, someone had to remember that there was an ‘after,’ win or lose, and that had to be prepared for as well even if none of them lived long enough to see it.

He frowned, but gave her a quick nod. “You have the lists of the safehouses. Assume everyone is HYDRA until given indisputable proof otherwise,” he told her. “Everyone. That includes people like Coulson and Barton and Banner—”

"Is that why you’ve been keeping them out of the loop?" Maria couldn’t help but ask. She’d been wondering. Banner was probably best left where he was, but Coulson had essentially been remade in SHIELD’s own image at Fury’s demand and Barton, history aside, would have been a useful weapon in their arsenal with their STRIKE teams all suborned and the Winter Soldier on the loose.

"Stark’s probably safe," Fury went on without answering. "Everything that makes him a bad fit for SHIELD makes him a worse fit for HYDRA. He’s not worshiping at anyone’s altar. If anything can be built on these ashes, then it will be built with his resources — whether he knows it or likes it. But I think he’ll go along if you play him right — appeal to his ego, reinforce it with moral obligation. His bullshit is skin deep; these are the people who murdered his family and if Rogers goes as well, he’ll be motivated enough. But make sure you stay on the right side of Potts unless you’re happy with the idea of her running the whole thing."

Maria didn’t blink at the likelihood of Captain America’s death. And that’s what it was, a likelihood. Possibly edging toward certitude because he had been very clear about his own secondary objectives and if HYDRA didn’t kill him, then it was very likely the Winter Soldier would.

"And if I don’t make it through, sir?" Maria asked, since that was a possibility. She was being tasked with relatively low-risk objectives with an eye toward her own survival, both to keep command-and-control of the operation once it was live and then to put the recovery into motion, but there were no guarantees in war.

"If none of us do, then Stark will find a list of names on his personal server and may God have mercy on all our souls."


	2. In Flight

She booked the ticket out of Hartford; Reagan, Dulles, and BWI had been reopened as of two weeks ago, but all three were still under so much extra security that it wasn’t just the spies who were avoiding them. Philadelphia and Newark were taking the brunt of the extra traffic and the other New York airports were to be avoided on general principles, so Hartford it was. After leaving the cemetery, she drove up to Connecticut because Amtrak wasn’t much better than the planes right now with respect to surveillance and her face had been plastered all over the front page of every newspaper that mattered over the last month. She switched cars twice, once at Metropark and once at Stamford, because they were commuter rail stations with large parking facilities and easily-avoided security.

The problem with flying out of Hartford was that there were no non-stops to her destination; she was forced to choose her flight based on where the connection was because she had to stay clear of other major airports to avoid being seen. Anything that stopped in Chicago, DC, or LA was out, which also meant that she was adding travel time, but a necessary concession under the circumstances. Detroit was the best option out of what was left, which in turn meant a late arrival after eight-plus hours in a cramped coach seat — everyone looks at the people in first class, if only to see who can afford to escape the cattle pens of economy.

She hadn’t spent much time in San Francisco recently, but it had once been a place of importance to her. It was where she had first gone about learning how to be a person and not an asset, where she had first discovered who Natasha was, as opposed to Natalia Alianovna, and what she liked and disliked. She’d had people here she liked — she hadn’t been capable of friendship then, not really, but if she had, then they would have been her first friends. She’d have to judge the climate first before trying to reach out now; she didn’t want to put anyone at risk. Or more at risk, since it was no secret to anyone anymore what she was and had been. Which in turn was why she had to avoid her old haunts, the bakeries and cafes and shops she’d once favored, and find new ones. But that was okay, this was San Francisco and there were always more to be discovered. It was a place of endless reinvention and she wasn’t the first or the thousandth to come here to make herself over into someone else, a face she could live with and look at in the mirror without shame.

It was good to be back.


	3. Clay Pigeon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whither Tony, Part One

Tony had just gotten through with his half-hour of cardio when JARVIS told him that Rhodey was on the line.

"Where are you?" Rhodey asked without preamble.

He debated all of the ways he could answer that before settling on the truth, since he was feeling a little self-pitying. “In the living room facing the sad fact that I’m not as spry as I used to be?”

Thirty minutes on the elliptical still required an hour of lying on the couch doing nothing afterward, something that would be embarrassing save for the fact that he was four months out from major thoracic surgery and it had only been a few weeks since he’d been able to walk between the bed and the couch without needing to nap once he’d gotten where he was going. He was doing great in his recovery, everyone said so, but he couldn’t see the improvements. All he saw was the limitations. He’d slept more in the last four months than in the last four years, which Pepper agreed was true but said spoke more to his old life than his new one. He would argue the point, but that meant considering all of the ways his old life (Mark II, or possibly Mark III, depending on who was doing the telling) had hurt Pepper and so he usually didn’t. She liked the ‘new’ him, possibly because he was pliable and docile and more attentive to her because he didn’t have the energy to do anything else. He told her frequently that he felt like he was her housecat, which sometimes got her to roll her eyes and sometimes got her to pet him until he purred.

"You’re in New York?" Rhodey sounded like he might be in the suit and Tony was jealous; even if he had any intact armor right now, he was in no condition to fly it.

"I am," he confirmed. Weehawken was visible in the distance because he was facing west. "You’re welcome to come by if you’d like."

Rhodey made a noise that Tony knew was him getting bad news he didn’t think he could fix. Which, considering the context, was of note.

"Does this have to do with what happened to Fury?" he asked, trying to sit up a little and then thinking better of it when he entire chest spasmed from the exertion. "I’m safer here than I would be almost anywhere else."

That Fury had been assassinated hadn’t surprised Tony at all — Fury had been a powerful man with powerful enemies and that there would be attempts on his life would be a given. Fury had gone out of his way to make enemies because you didn’t accumulate the kind of power that mattered through any means other than by taking it from those who had it. That the successful attempt had come at Steve Rogers’s apartment had surprised him a little because while, yes, Rogers was an excellent first choice to turn to in times of trouble, he was also an obvious first choice and not exactly living undercover near Dupont Circle and there were probably half a dozen foreign and domestic spy agencies watching the place besides whatever SHIELD had set up. Fury had needed to go there for a reason, one worth his life, and Tony was curious what it was, but he also knew that nobody was going to tell him right now… unless Rhodey was about to do so.

"You are not safe anywhere right now, Tony," Rhodey said flatly. "How many places do you have that are off the grid? I mean _really_ off the grid.”

Four or five around the world, Tony thought. Bought with cash, not held in his name or Pepper’s name or touched in any way by Stark Industries. None of which he would feel more secure in than the penthouse because they had no other advantages besides the aforementioned.

"Why?" Tony asked and he knew Rhodey could read the tone of his voice. He also knew that this was why Rhodey had sounded like he’d known he’d already lost the argument.

"SHIELD’s issued capture-or-kill orders on Captain America, Black Widow, and Hawkeye," Rhodey replied and this time Tony did sit up, muscle spasms be damned. "They just tried to execute the one on Cap. Right in front of the Triskelion."

Without even needing to be asked, JARVIS pulled up the relevant video footage — between SHIELD and Homeland Security, the entire District and environs was one giant _Truman Show_.

"Well, that was unexpected," Tony drawled as he watched Rogers make good his escape.

“ _Tony_.”

"Look, I’ll be the first person to admit that the possibility of air-launched Hellfires changes the equation a little," Tony began before Rhodey could warm up. "But I’m staying here. First, I don’t like running. We had that discussion six months ago about the Mandarin and you lost that one fair and square. Second, I _can’t_ run, even if I could jog competently right now. If they’re gunning for me, then I can’t get on a plane or into a car and be anywhere they can’t find me and blow me up before I clear the Tri-State area.

"Pepper’s in Zurich and I’ll get her to a safehouse in Europe, but I stay here."


	4. Entail

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whither Tony, part two: the ghost of James Barnes

Tony had seven solid light HUD screens open when Rhodey, looking slightly less dead man walking after his nap, came in to the living room and dropped down heavily next to him. He had a green juice in a tall glass in his hand, but Tony could also smell bacon because Marcel, his personal chef, did not believe in dietary trends and there were probably belgian waffles already underway. Breakfast for dinner was something Marcel had long ago come to terms with.

“How bad is it?” Rhodey asked as he took a sip, then winced. Tony probably should have warned him about the watercress, but that wouldn’t have been sporting. Or fun. “What the hell is that?”

Rhodey had landed on the balcony five hours ago or so, exhausted and heartsick after spending the day and night watching the US government teeter on the edge of a cliff it hadn’t seen approaching at high speed. It had been less than a day since Natasha had released the HYDRA and SHIELD files into the ether, less since the Pentagon had spasmed and then unclenched, sending out directives to first lock down all bases and then force everyone in uniform to re-take their oath of enlistment and disavow HYDRA before sending them out to keep the peace. HYDRA was in the government – and when things weren’t quite so fraught and tense, Tony would have a **party** to celebrate that Stern, that rat bastard, was one of them – and the country and the world were on the edge of panic.

“That is a national nightmare for a different day,” Tony replied, knowing which screen Rhodey was looking at. “Miss Romanov sent me a get-well present.”

The screen under discussion was a 3D rendering of the Winter Soldier’s arm, part of a packet of files on the man – or “man” – who’d been Fury’s putative assassin, a Cold War legend, and might just be Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes. It was the last that Natasha wanted verified; Rogers was clearly convinced, but he was, to put it mildly, not the most objective observer right now. Rogers wasn’t observing anything at the moment – he’d been fished out of the Potomac a few hours ago and was still in surgery an Undisclosed Location that happened to be HUP in Philadelphia – but they were going to need an answer before he regained consciousness because this was not going to be something he would be willing to drop.

“Is that the HYDRA asset who took out half the cavalry?” Rhodey asked, grimacing as he finished the contents of the glass. “What is it with you and watercress? Can’t you just drink kale like every other lemming?”

Dad had kept the files on Barnes out of SHIELD’s hands from the beginning, part of a pact with Peggy Carter and the others to leave the sordid past in the past. Barnes had been long dead, Rogers had been more recently dead, and nobody had needed to know that Captain America possibly hadn’t been the only super-soldier in the Howling Commandos. Tony had scanned in Dad’s files after the Battle of New York, once it became clear that the Avengers Initiative was going to be a thing and that Fury was going to play Rasputin by way of Knute Rockne; he wanted the origins of SHIELD’s secrets if he was going to be spending time cleaning up what those secrets turned into.

“I like watercress,” Tony replied loftily. “It’s got a kick.”

He threw some of the screens with documents Rhodey’s way – nothing to do with the Winter Soldier, not that Rhodey wouldn’t be interested, just that he was currently more interested in whether the Republic was still standing. Which in turn Tony wasn’t disinterested by, but that was going to be someone else’s job all the way anyway – Rhodey was part of the crew holding the line between chaos and civilization, Tony wasn’t. He had been their armorer for a while, then he’d been their adorably rascally cousin as Iron Man, now he was… a very smart man with a diminished conditioning level and lung capacity and a very particular ability to see the future. James Barnes, alive as the Winter Soldier in DC or seventy years dead in an Alpine valley, was going to matter.

After a meal of buttermilk waffles and bacon and fruit salad, Tony took Rhodey down to the workshop so they could futz with Rhodey’s armor, which wasn’t malfunctioning, but he’d managed to bend a few things that hadn’t meant to bend when he’d been trying to move Helicarrier parts off of structures that contained people. There was no point in reminding Rhodey of the maximum lift limits and torque capacity; Tony would have done the same thing in the same circumstance, although he would have known better than to blow out the hand repulsors when the legs had eight times the thrust.

“Sometimes, it’s really obvious you have an economics degree,” Tony told him as he disassembled the right gauntlet. “Dummy, go dig out a pair of palms out of the parts bin, would you?”

Dummy wheeled off after a parting chirp at Rhodey that managed to thoroughly convey that he didn’t think much of Rhodey’s economics degree, either.

“Hush, you glorified can opener,” Rhodey called after him, but without any heat. Rhodey was Dummy’s favorite uncle; they’d gotten over their early animosity years ago.

Rhodey left after the suit was put back together; he’d gotten three different calls from the White House requesting his immediate presence. He got to talk to Pepper before he left, assuring her that he would make sure Tony didn’t do anything crazy, which nobody took seriously because Pepper knew that, historically and especially since Afghanistan, Rhodey had been an enabler more than he’d been a container.

“Stay where you are and get comfortable,” Rhodey told her. “They’re not going to re-open the airports for a day or two and it’s going to be a mess for even longer. You can do what you need to do from Trieste.”

_Thank you_ , Tony mouthed at Rhodey once Pepper agreed. They both knew that Pepper would not have acquiesced if it had been Tony asking; she always thought he was being overprotective. Which he possibly had been since the Extremis incident, but that didn’t negate the fact that Pepper, as the CEO of Stark Industries, was a prime HYDRA target and she would be extremely vulnerable in transit.

Once he’d seen Rhodey off, Tony returned to the couch and asked JARVIS to call up the SSR files from 1943 that included the reports on and interviews with the just-rescued Sergeant James B. Barnes.

“Okay, Dad, what kind of mess did you leave for me now?”


	5. Oasis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint on the run, from the frying pan into the fire.

Clint was in Palmyra when his phone beeped for a text. He'd turned the thing off three days ago and, honestly, the first thought that he'd had was that Tony was being a fucking wiseass and hacking his phone despite him _knowing_ that Clint turned off his phone for precisely one reason and that reason was that his life would be in jeopardy if it rang. So his thoughts were on whether Fury would give him a pay bump or an ass-chewing if he did something lasting to Stark. 

But it wasn't Tony, which meant that he didn't have to be grateful that Pepper Potts graded on a curve. (He was generally grateful for that, but embedding an arrow in Tony's ass was of a different order than him not knowing a white wine glass from a water glass when they both came with stems.) The text came from Natasha, although there was no name attached. She was the only one with the code to remotely turn on his phone. The text was simple and terrifying in its simplicity.

_SHIELD = HYDRA. C/K on you + me + Cap. GTG & check 3rd drop in 7._

He could translate it easily, but the words still made no sense in their full form. HYDRA was seventy years in the dust heap of history, so how they'd suborned SHIELD was a mystery, although considering Cap was running around seventy years after he died, too, Clint maybe should be less shocked. That Natasha was bypassing her first two alternate communication options was a testament to how badly she thought they were fucked and that he took very seriously. But the capture-or-kill notice was the hard part. He believed her, absolutely, but he was already in a fucking war zone where everyone was already willing to either kill him or sell him to someone who did and the realization that he had to either find safety here or crawl out of this cesspit and hope he had an ally left in the world, well, that was a tall order for a man who'd been running on empty for the last few days.

Staying in Syria wasn't his first choice, but his closest allies in the region were also the most likely to go along with a request coming out of DC that didn't involve their domestic affairs. 

He dialed a number he knew from memory. 

"Hey, Ofir," he began when the connection was made. He spoke in Arabic so as not to draw attention should anyone be close enough to overhear. "So it seems my agency's put out a burn notice on me. If I turn up in Tel Aviv, what are the odds your people are going to hogtie me and throw me on the first El-Al flight to DC?"

A bitter laugh was his answer. "Low. Fury's dead and SHIELD just tried to use a Hellfire to assassinate Captain America right outside the Triskelion. Nobody knows what the fuck is going on with your people, but the assumption is that _you_ are not the problem."

Clint laughed, but more because he didn't know what other kind of reaction to have. He understood the words, but they made no sense. "Fury's _dead_?" he asked, although that was the least preposterous part of what he'd heard. Fury had a million enemies and faced at least two assassination attempts a month; statistically, they were going to get him at some point. That SHIELD would launch a jet to try to blow up Cap on the Beltway was too insane to even imagine, however. 

"You're clearly under a rock," Ofir replied, not meaning it as a value judgment. The two of them had spent weeks under rocks together over the years. "Come out from under it and I'll tell you the whole story over arak and schnitzel. Don't use your papers, whatever they are. You remember that shitty dive in Akko? Get yourself there and I'll find you."

It took three days to get to Acre because he had to sneak across a border heavily watched by multiple parties and then make his way through the insanity that was Israel's road system. The latter was more dangerous. He got to the bar, left a message and a healthy tip for the bartender, and spent the day moving from café to café with copies of, in turn _Haaretz_ , _Israel HaYom_ , the _J-Post_ , and _Maariv_ , each with the same stories that might as well have been in a funnybook for all that they had pictures of Helicarriers falling out of the sky and the Triskelion reduced to rubble and stories of data uploads that laid bare a global infection no antibiotic could cure. Ofir was waiting at a table in the rear of the bar when he returned and, over arak and shawarma and pickles and fries, Clint got the story of what had gone on the last few days. It made no sense hearing it from someone he trusted, either. 

"You realize this sounds like bullshit, right?" he asked, spearing a pickled radish that had escaped his pita. "I mean, this all sounds like a Michael Bay movie and I'm speaking as someone who has been up close with both demi-gods and aliens." 

Ofir, mouth full, rolled his eyes. "It looked like a Michael Bay movie on television," he assured once he'd swallowed. "But your friend just made Snowden an afterthought and we've had every agency all-hands for all-hours trying to make sense of what she uploaded. Starting with Alexander Pierce being the new Johann Schmidt and it only gets worse from there."

Clint took a moment to appreciate how insane Israel's intelligence and security communities must be with the proof of the return and immense power of HYDRA, the effective takeover of SHIELD and the US Government and God knew what else by an organization that had been the Nazis's most competent element. 

"You guys are fireproof?" Clint asked, since it would be foolish to assume that HYDRA's reach stopped at the US's borders. Especially with the ties between DC and Jerusalem.

"Fuck no, we're not fireproof," Ofir spat. "We're one step away from a panic. So is everyone else. There isn't a security service in the world right now that's not freaking out. And that's just worrying about secrets. Your entire Direct Action service got suborned, the guys with the best training and the biggest guns. You think anyone else isn't afraid that their own might be about to go rabid and shoot up the place in the name of a new world order?"

The meal ended with Ofir handing him a large wad of shekels and euros in small bills. "Because we're not fireproof, I can't guarantee your safety if our people know where you are," he warned. "But you're safer here than anywhere else because the odds of us being infested with neo-Nazis is probably lower than anywhere else right now. Get yourself some new papers and go be a tourist or a kibbutznik or something until this blows over. If someone finds you, we won't let them take you from us."

Clint took the promise of limited protection - the best that could be offered under the circumstances - along with the cash as gestures of friendship. He and Ofir hugged and went their separate ways with promises to keep in touch and fuller stories once they were available - with the understanding that it would be Clint's turn to tell stories once he heard what was really going on. He spent the night in Akko and went up to Nahariya in the morning to buy false papers; it would be easier there and also harder to trace if Shabak didn't know where he'd started his disappearing act. From there, it was a couple of buses and a hitchhiked ride to the middle of nowhere, where he played the Quebecois tourist (his French accent was terrible, despite his fluency, so he could sound Canadian) and took stupid pictures on his phone and paid too much for everything like a tourist would. He moved around at a brisk but leisurely pace, sleeping in and eating well if not lingering, killing time until he could check in with Natasha to see if it was safe to poke his head up yet. He looked at the newspapers and bought time at internet cafés en route, so he knew that Steve was alive, if not necessarily in one piece.

"It's bad," Natasha said when they got in touch. "There's more that isn't public domain yet and it's... it's bad. Come to New York; Stark will put you up."

He made his way to Amman and bought a ticket to Montreal, which was more complicated than it should have been because he never remembered that Dorval wasn't Dorval anymore. He texted Ofir to tell him he'd left Israel from the bus between Montreal and Boston; from Boston he took Acela down to New York and walked up to Stark's place from Penn Station. 

"Grab some popcorn, pull up a seat, and watch the show," Tony greeted him from the couch as a half-dozen solid light screens danced and slid through the air. Some had words, some had pictures, and none of them made a damned bit of sense. "For our main feature, we've got the future of the American republic - it's a real cliffhanger. Instead of the cartoon warm-up, we've got a sci-fi special that will blow your mind: your childhood hero turned zombie assassin! But first, shower. I can smell you from here."

Clint flipped Tony the bird, which he didn't see, and followed JARVIS's directions to the linen closet and the shower because Tony wasn't wrong.

Being clean and then fed fancy food (and popcorn) didn't make up for the fact that Natasha had not been underselling just how bad things actually were. 


End file.
